Kay Dick

"They" is de aanduiding voor een mysterieuze macht die de "ik"-figuur en haar vrienden bedreigt.

A Sequence of Unease

They

A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual.

Sara Mercedes

Daniel U

Cassie B

Fatin Allen

A lost dystopian masterpiece, newly available for the first time in decades. Published to some acclaim in 1977 but swiftly forgotten, Kay Dick's They follows a nameless, genderless narrator living in a lush but decimated English countryside, where a loose cohort of cultural refugees live seemingly idyllic, artistic, often polyamorous lives. But this rustic tranquility is punctuated by bursts of menace as they must continually flee a faceless oppressor, an organization known only as "They," whose supporters range the countryside in a grisly mob of mostly mute, quasi-automatons. Moving in slow but deliberate concentric circles, "They" root out free-thinking subversives: the surviving artists, craftspeople, intellectuals, even the unmarried and the childless. As Dick unveils in ominous fragments, "They" are not affiliated with a dystopic totalitarian state, "They" are an unsanctioned multitude, the strength of which appears to lie not in official mandates, but rather in the swell of their ever-increasing numbers. An electrifying literary artefact--a lost dystopian masterpiece and overlooked queer classic--They returns to print in this special international publication brimming with contemporary resonance.

They A Sequence of Unease

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